The price of gold in Thailand rose by THB150 per baht weight on Friday morning, rebounding after two consecutive days of decline.
The Gold Traders Association report at 9.21am showed buying price of a gold bar at THB28,000 per baht weight and selling price at THB28,100, while gold ornaments were priced at THB27,500.24 and THB28,600, respectively.
At close on Thursday, the buying price of a gold bar was THB27,850 per baht weight and selling price THB27,950, while gold ornaments were priced at THB27,348.64 and THB28,450, respectively.
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Spot gold price on Friday was US$1,804 (THB59,405) per ounce after Comex gold on Thursday rose by $2 to $1,805.4 per ounce on decline in US bond yield, the European Central Bank’s signal it would maintain the interest rate at a low level for two years, and mass buy-ups of the precious metal in response to the rise in US jobless claims.
Hong Kong gold price, meanwhile, rose by HK$110 to $16,740 (THB70,940) per tael, the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society reported.
Bitcoin hovers around $32,000 after boost from Musk, Arks Wood
Bitcoin steadied as traders mulled the largest cryptocurrencys next move following a rebound stoked by comments from Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood.
The digital asset was little changed at $31,820 as of 7 a.m. in New York on Thursday after jumping 6.5% a day earlier. Other cryptos, including Ether and Dogecoin, held onto gains, as did the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index.
Tesla already owns bitcoin but Chief Executive Officer Musk revealed at a conference on Wednesday that his space exploration company SpaceX also does. He added he’d like to see the token succeed and that he personally has bought bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin. Ark Investment Management’s Wood said corporations should consider adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets, while Dorsey described it as resilient.
“Yesterday’s debate did undoubtedly provide some comfort to the markets,” said Ulrik Lykke, executive director at crypto hedge fund ARK36. “However, the jury is still out on whether this positive spark will bring enough confidence to change the direction of the markets.”
Some $1.3 trillion has been wiped off the market value of cryptocurrencies since mid-May. Bitcoin has faced a range of obstacles, including stepped up regulatory scrutiny in China, Europe and the U.S. and concerns about the energy needed by the computers underpinning it. Investors have also generally become more cautious about speculative assets.
Billionaire Musk said bitcoin mining is “shifting towards renewable energy” and his company will likely resume accepting it as payment for electric cars.
The token has bounced back after sliding below $30,000 earlier in the week, a round number viewed as a key line of support by technical analysts. The latest bounce reflects the third time since late 2019 that bitcoin has found support at its 55-week moving average.
“The fear in the market was that if bitcoin breaks below the $30,000 mark, the price will move lower violently,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst with Ava Trade Ltd. “In reality, that is not what we have seen. The bitcoin price has been stable, and we have not seen any panic selling.”
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Scott Minerd, chairman and chief investment officer of Guggenheim Investments, said bitcoin could yet fall toward $15,000. Steen Jakobsen, chief investment officer at Saxo Bank, said a sustainable break above $32,000 is needed for bitcoin “to dig itself out of a hole.”
Bitcoin’s advance this year has shrunk to about 10% following a slide from an April record of almost $65,000. That compares with a 16% jump in the S&P 500 Index in 2021.
Proponents argue the virtual currency offers an inflation hedge and will win wider institutional acceptance. Such narratives were always controversial and remain in question, though bitcoin’s most ardent fans continue to predict big long-term returns.
Published : July 23, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Eric Lam
Oil edges up with robust global demand tightening crude market
Oil rose amid expectations that recovering demand from the U.S. to India and Spain will further tighten global crude markets.
Futures in New York climbed as much as 1.2% on Thursday after posting the biggest gain in three months on Wednesday. Gasoline demand is essentially back to normal in many of the biggest oil-consuming countries, with road traffic data showing a similar trend. The market recovery has spurred China to supply crude from its strategic reserves to local refiners in a bid to cool prices.
“The fundamental backdrop is bullish because of just the structural deficit that we’re in,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital.
Oil has rebounded after a nearly 8% loss on Monday as fears around the delta variant and its impact on economic recovery shook broader markets. The price plunge came just after a weekend meeting of OPEC+, at which the 23-nation alliance led by Saudi Arabia and Russia finalized plans to restore halted production.
“It’s just not enough oil,” said Kilduff. “The 400,000 barrel-a-day increase monthly is not going to get the job done and you’re going to see these inventories globally continue to tighten and tighten.”
West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery rose 42 cents to $70.72 a barrel at 10:43 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent for September settlement added 40 cents to $72.63 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange.
Brent’s prompt timespread was 60 cents a barrel in backwardation. While that’s a bullish pattern — with near-dated prices above those further out — it compares with 70 cents a barrel a week ago.
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In the U.S., an inventory report released this week showed declining fuel and distillate supplies with the summer driving season well underway. Oil inventories at the nation’s key storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, fell to the lowest since January 2020.
China’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve supplied about 3 million tons, or 22 million barrels, to processors earlier this month, according to people familiar with the situation. The move was intended to cool prices, the people said. The operation might weaken Chinese demand for imported crude.
Published : July 23, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jill R. Shah
U.S.-China trade booms as if virus, tariffs never happened
China and the U.S. are shipping goods to each other at the briskest pace in years, making the worlds largest bilateral trade relationship look as if the protracted tariff war and pandemic never happened.
Eighteen months after the Trump administration signed the trade deal, the agreement has turned out to be a truce at best. The U.S. trade deficit hasn’t shrunk, most levies are still in place, and it hasn’t led to negotiations over other economic issues.
And yet, bilateral trade in goods is an area of stability in a relationship that has otherwise continued to deteriorate, with rising tension over Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, accusations of computer hacking and many other flashpoints.
Monthly two-way trade, which tumbled to $19 billion in February of last year amid shutdowns in Chinese factories, rebounded over the past year to new records, according to official Chinese data. And that boom looks set to continue, with China purchasing millions of tons of U.S. farm goods for this year and next and stuck-at-home U.S. consumers still shopping and importing in record amounts.
While the U.S. government’s numbers differ somewhat, the bustling trade has defied all expectations that the tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of merchandise would force a decoupling of supply chains. Instead, both sides have learned to live with the taxes, with Chinese firms buying more to fulfill the terms of the 2020 trade deal, and U.S. companies purchasing goods they can’t get elsewhere to meet elevated household demand fueled in part by trillions of dollars in government stimulus.
“We’ve seen the strong consumer demand that’s been occurring throughout the pandemic, and we’ve seen the import levels just go through the roof,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply-chains and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, which represents vendors from mom-and-pop stores through the big-box chain behemoths. “That’s a strong sign that the economy continues to recover.”
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Exports from South Korea and Taiwan to the U.S. have also risen over the same period, underscoring the strength of U.S. demand despite one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 of any nation.
Almost half of the $259 billion in cargo moving in and out of Los Angeles port — the U.S.’s biggest — involves China and Hong Kong. U.S. demand for goods continues unabated, with record inbound shipments to the port in May as companies start to restock ahead of the Christmas shopping season.
“All signs point to a robust second half of the year,” Los Angeles port Executive Director Gene Seroka said during a recent press briefing, noting that fall fashion, back-to-school, Halloween and holiday goods were already arriving on the docks.
With tariffs in place on more than $300 billion in imports from China, from footwear and clothing to electronics and bicycles and even pet food, many U.S. retailers are choosing to absorb the cost and squeezing their profit margins, the NRF’s Gold said. Some are passing these along to consumers.
Firms also are dealing with backlogs and bottlenecks at U.S. ports and increased shipping costs.
The number of container ships waiting to enter the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, increased to a 3 1/2-month high this week, while the spot shipping rate for a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Los Angeles is more than triple a year ago.
“Between the cost of the tariffs and the increased cost of transportation that we’re seeing, that’s having an impact on companies’ bottom line,” Gold said. “They’ve seen significant cost increases as a result of both the trade war and the transportation crisis we’re facing.”
The Biden administration hasn’t said whether it plans to continue with the deal and is reviewing U.S. policy toward China, but with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai calling the trade relationship “unbalanced” and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the deal didn’t address the fundamental problems with China, the outlook is unfavorable.
On top of those tensions, China’s purchasing targets expire at the end of the year, and the nation is well behind where it promised it would be now. Those targets were initially seen as unrealistically high and problems like the Covid-19 pandemic or the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max jet put them even further out of reach.
Even if the deal is scrapped, the lesson from the past four or so years is that even if there is political will, it’s harder to stop or divert international trade than might have been thought.
With Beijing missing its purchase targets, China refraining from aircraft purchases and companies moving automotive production out of the U.S. to avoid getting hit with tariffs from the trade war, the agreement between the world’s two biggest economies is “pretty irrelevant at this stage,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, whose latest research has focused on the pact.
“China buys what China needs,” Bown said. “If it’s buying more of certain American products, it’s doing so probably out of its own interest.”
Published : July 23, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Eric Martin, James Mayger
Stocks approached their all-time highs, led by technology companies. Treasuries climbed, while the dollar barely moved.
The S&P 500 notched its biggest three-day advance since April, but gains paled in comparison to the previous two sessions. Giants Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. rallied, while firms closely tied to a broader reopening of businesses underperformed. Earlier Thursday, equities fell on news that multiple prominent websites were inaccessible to some users.
Rising earnings expectations have tempered worries over peaking growth and the spread of the delta coronavirus variant that roiled markets at the start of the week. Economic reports were mixed, showing sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose for the first time in five months, while jobless claims unexpectedly climbed.
“There’s going to be some choppiness in the market in the second half of the year, but we think it’s going to trend higher,” said Victoria Fernandez, chief market strategist at Crossmark Global Investments. “We have so much liquidity in the market right now, you have companies with a tremendous amount of cash on their balance sheets, you have rates at tremendous lows. There’s all these positive things that are happening that underlie the growth potential for the economy going forward.”
Among the corporate highlights, Union Pacific Corp., the largest publicly traded railroad, climbed as profit topped analysts’ projections. AT&T Inc. rose after beating Wall Street estimates amid surging subscriber growth. American Airlines Group Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. slipped after cautious outlooks, while D.R. Horton Inc. sank on an unexpected plunge in new home orders.
As earnings continue to roll in, American stocks are regaining a leadership position in world markets. The ratio between the S&P 500 and an S&P Global gauge of shares listed outside the U.S. shows as much. After falling as much as 10.4% between September and February, the ratio rallied to a record on July 9 and again on Tuesday.
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These are some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
– The S&P 500 rose 0.2% as of 4 p.m. EDT
– The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.7%
– The Dow Jones industrial average was little changed
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– The MSCI World index rose 0.4%
– The Russell 2000 Index fell 1.5%
Currencies
– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed
– The euro fell 0.2% to $1.1770
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– The British pound rose 0.4% to $1.3767
– The Japanese yen rose 0.1% to 110.15 per dollar
Bonds
– The yield on 10-year Treasurys declined three basis points to 1.26%
– Germany’s 10-year yield declined three basis points to -0.43%
– Britain’s 10-year yield declined four basis points to 0.57%
Commodities
– West Texas Intermediate crude rose 2% to $71.69 a barrel
– Gold futures rose 0.2% to $1,811.50 an ounce
Published : July 23, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Rita Nazareth, Claire Ballentine
Company hit by massive ransomware attack obtains key to unlock customer files
The company hit by a massive ransomware attack just before July Fourth weekend said it has obtained a computer key to unlock the files of hundreds of companies.
Kaseya, an information technology company, said it got the universal decryptor key from a “trusted third party” and has validated that it works. Spokeswoman Dana Liedholm said Kaseya received the key Wednesday and has been working with customers to roll it out.
Liedholm declined to say whether Kaseya paid a ransom to obtain the key.
The hacking group behind the attack, called REvil, originally demanded $70 million to provide a universal decryptor key. But then the group disappeared online, leaving companies that may have wanted to pay a ransom high and dry.
Kaseya provides a software that allows companies to manage their computer systems, and it supplies that to managed service providers that in turn service tens of thousands of companies. The affected software spread to between 800 and 1,500 companies, Kaseya estimated. Those companies were then unable to access their files. Instead, they were prompted to pay a ransom to get a decryptor key that would return control to them. The ransom demands ranged from $45,000 for smaller companies up to $5 million for larger ones.
The attack hit a small town in Maryland, where staffers were unable to use their computers or send out utility bills, and a large grocery store chain in Sweden, which had to temporarily close its hundreds of locations.
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The ransomware attack was the latest in a string of high-profile attacks stemming mainly from organized groups of hackers based in Eastern Europe. The frequency and severity of such attacks have increased in the past two years, especially as hackers band together to make the attacks more lucrative.
Hackers made their way into Kaseya’s software by discovering a vulnerability in the company’s software and using that to get into their system. But most ransomware attacks use relatively unsophisticated methods to break into computers, such as sending phishing emails that trick employees into opening an attachment or clicking on a link that downloads malicious software, which goes on to encrypt files and bar access to the whole network.
Some experts conservatively estimate that hackers received $412 million in ransom payments just last year.
A high-profile attack against Colonial Pipeline in May caused panicked fuel-buying and long lines at gas stations. Another attack, against meat supplier JBS, temporarily shut down meat plants across the United States. The company eventually paid hackers $11 million to restore its systems.
SET rises 0.74% despite pressure from Covid, fund outflows
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index closed at 1,552.36 on Thursday, up 11.48 points or 0.74 per cent. Transactions totalled THB69.68 billion with an index high of 1,554.65 and a low of 1,546.26.
In the morning session, Krungsri Securities predicted the day’s index would fluctuate between 1,530 and 1,550 points despite a rise in the oil price after US oil storage slid to its lowest level in 18 months.
“The SET Index is being pressured by concern that Covid-19 Delta outbreaks here and overseas will hit global economic recovery, as well as the outflow of foreign funds,” Krungsri Securities said.
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The 10 stocks with the highest trade value today were SCB, KBANK, KCE, HANA, GPSC, BBL, GUNKUL, CPF, PTTGC and ADVANC.
Other Asian indices were up:
China’s Shanghai SE Composite Index closed at 3,574.73, up 12.07 points or 0.34 per cent, while the Shenzhen SE Component Index closed at 15,262.19, up 49.59 points or 0.33 per cent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed at 27,723.84, up 499.26 points or 1.83 per cent.
South Korea’s KOSPI closed at 3,250.21, up 34.30 points or 1.07 per cent.
Taiwan’s TAIEX closed at 17,572.33, up 113.54 points or 0.65 per cent.
SET Index likely to fluctuate today as Delta variant, foreign fund outflows fuel concern
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index rose by 8.25 points or 0.54 per cent to 1,549.13 on Thursday morning.
Krungsri Securities predicted the day’s index would fluctuate between 1,530 and 1,550 points despite a rise in the oil price after US oil storage slid to its lowest level in 18 months.
“The worry that outbreaks of the Covid-19 Delta variant both domestic and overseas will hit global economic recovery plus the outflow of foreign funds would pressure the SET Index,” Krungsri Securities said.
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It recommended investors buy:
▪︎ Hana, KCE, TU, CPF, Asian and EPG, which benefit from a weakening baht.
▪︎ BCH, CHG, BDMS, HMPro, Global, DoHome, BEM, CKP, CBG, OSP, Ichi, GPSC, BEC, Gunkul, JWD, Wice, Sonic and NER, whose second-quarter business turnover is expected to improve.
The SET Index closed at 1,540.88 on Wednesday, up 2.02 points or 0.13 per cent. Transactions totalled THB73.68 billion with an index high of 1,545.39 and a low of 1,532.34.
The baht opened at 32.85 to the US dollar on Thursday, weakening from Wednesday’s closing rate of 32.84
The Thai currency is likely to move between 32.75 and 32.90 during the day, Krungthai Bank market strategist Poon Panichpibool said.
He said the baht would not strengthen soon due to the dire Covid-19 situation in the country, causing foreign investors to offload their assets such as stocks in Thailand.
However, Poon believed the Thai currency would not weaken below 33 per US dollar if investors felt safe from the worldwide Covid-19 situation and hence did not need to hold onto safe-haven assets.
Gold price in downtrend due to rising US bond yield
The price of gold in Thailand dropped by THB100 per baht weight in morning trade on Thursday.
AGold Traders Association report at 9.29am showed the buying price of a gold bar at THB27,900 per baht weight and selling price at THB28,000, while gold ornaments cost THB27,394.12 and THB28,500, respectively.
At close on Wednesday, the buying price of a gold bar was THB28,000 per baht weight and selling price THB28,100, while gold ornaments cost THB27,500.24 and THB28,600, respectively.
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The spot gold price on Thursday was US$1,800 (THB59,101) per ounce after Comex gold on Wednesday dropped by $8 to $1,803.40 per ounce due to a rise in the US bond yield.
The Hong Kong gold price meanwhile dropped by HK$10 to $16,710 (THB70,587) per tael, the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society reported.
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